PAPERS RELATING TO LAMBETH DEGREES

F VI

PAPERS RELATING TO LAMBETH DEGREES

[1783-1970]

The statute 25 Henry VIII, c.21, (1533), gave the Archbishop of Canterbury the right to grant all faculties formerly granted by the Pope and on this statute is founded his right to grant degrees. Lambeth MS.1133 gives the names of two clergy granted degrees by the Pope in 1492 and 1497. Although there were by no means so many degrees granted in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as now the Archbishop was sometimes criticised for what was held to be a popish abuse. Francis Gastrell, Bishop of Chester, voices his opinion in no uncertain terms in his pamphlet The Bishop of Chester's case with relation to the Wardenship of Manchester, 1721. This was written to defend his action in rejecting the Archbishop's candidate for the wardenship of Manchester collegiate church in 1717, as this man's only qualification was a Lambeth degree. He says 'no other degrees but such as are taken in the university can be deemed legal qualifications for any ecclesiastical preferment in England' and he concludes 'it is therefore humbly hoped that an old popish abuse, long since exploded, and banished from other parts of Europe will not now be adjudged a convenient and necessary practice here in England ...'. Now that the conferring of these degrees is only used to reward services to the Church, and not to qualify men without degrees to hold office, this right goes unquestioned.

The papers relating to Lambeth degrees which have survived are the warrants filed with the fiats (FII), and registered in the muniment books (FI), and registers and correspondence from the late nineteenth century to the present day which are described below. In the nineteenth century and up to 1920 M.A.s were granted on examination, now they, like the other Lambeth degrees are granted at the Archbishop's discretion, at his own instigation or on consideration of a petition.

English